On the morning of April 29, students at the University of Washington Seattle started a protest encampment in solidarity with Palestine. Participants pitched tents in the Quad, a grass courtyard and major thoroughfare on the campus.
The encampment started as a relatively humble affair, with about half a dozen tents and 30 students. They were soon joined by more students in the early afternoon on May 1. Organizers with the coalition United Front for Palestinian Liberation (UF) declared the expanded camp a “liberated zone” and a “popular university for Gaza.” By the evening of May 2, well over 100 participants and 50 tents were on the Quad lawn.
Zho Ragen, a recent UW Ph.D. graduate and spokesperson for UF, said the protest had three main demands to university administrators: divesting from academic and material entanglements with Israel, cutting ties with Boeing, and ensuring the safety of Palestinian, Muslim and Arab students and protesters.
“We are committed to staying here until our demands are met, and we are committed to continuing to care for our community members here,” Ragen said. “We are here acting in utmost solidarity with the Palestinian resistance and with the Palestinian people.”
The encampment was initially hampered by a rift between UF and an offshoot group, the Progressive Student Union (PSU), which set up the solidarity encampment two days ahead of schedule. At the time, Palestinian activists criticized PSU on social media for not working in conjunction with the coalition. But since May 1, both groups have papered over the divide and are now maintaining an appearance of unity.
So far, events in the Quad have remained peaceful and calm, with students periodically engaging in chants, speeches, political education seminars, dancing and music. Protesters set up an art tent for making signs, as well organized logistics around collecting donations of food, toiletries and other supplies.
The UW encampment comes amid a national uprising of college student activists across the U.S. in support of Palestine. Since the October 7 Palestinian militant attack on Israel and the subsequent bombing and invasion of Gaza by Israel, hundreds of thousands of Americans have held ongoing and persistent protests against the war. This movement has included a strong presence of university students, staff and faculty, who called for an end to U.S. aid to the Israeli military, which has now killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza — the majority of whom are women and children.
However, the nationwide protests entered a new phase April 17 when students at Columbia University in New York founded a permanent protest encampment on a lawn adjacent to the university’s administrative building. The encampment was an explicit callback to the 1968 anti-Vietnam War protests at Columbia, in which students used similar tactics to call attention to the university’s role in supporting the war.
Columbia suspended students, which meant police could arrest them for trespassing and dismantle the camp on April 18. This harsh response by Columbia administration galvanized students across the country. Over the next two weeks, dozens of new Palestine solidarity encampments popped up on campuses throughout the U.S. Many were met by similar scenes of repression by police. On the night of April 30, a pro-Israel mob attacked a solidarity encampment at the University of California in Los Angeles.
Instead of ending the protests, the crackdowns seem to have further motivated pro-Palestine activists. According to The Associated Press, more than 2,400 students have been arrested across 46 campuses as of May 6. Sympathetic faculty and staff appalled by the police violence have also joined the protests. In one high-profile instance, 65-year-old Dartmouth College professor and Jewish Studies chair Annelise Orleck was thrown to the ground by cops and arrested at a demonstration on May 1. Orleck later wrote on Twitter that she and fellow faculty members were trying to protect their students from arrest.
Similar encampments have since sprouted in Australia, Europe, India and Canada as well. Palestinian students, whose universities have been destroyed by Israeli forces and are currently living in the Rafah displaced persons camp in the south of Gaza, told Al Jazeera that they were heartened by the show of solidarity from their international counterparts.
“This is a huge youth movement of people who are angered by what’s occurring in Palestine and refusing to allow their institutions to be a driving force behind the genocide and destruction of Palestine and Palestinians,” said Isaac, a fourth year UW student with Institutional Climate Action and a member of UF. Isaac chose to only disclose his first name due to fear of reprisal.
“This is just one step in a broad, growing student movement,” he said.
For now, the response from UW administrators has been subdued. Prior to the encampment launch, maintenance staff put up signs in the Quad with the text “no camping allowed.”
In an April 29 email to Real Change, UW spokesperson Victor Balta wrote that the university will “monitor the situation throughout the day and respond as appropriate to maintain a safe and secure environment for our campus community.”
While the response from many U.S. universities has been to repress student protesters, a handful of administrators have chosen instead to negotiate with them. At Brown University in Rhode Island, students agreed to dismantle their encampment after the institution committed to holding a vote on divestment in October. At Northwestern University, students and administration agreed to increase student and faculty input on its endowment investment policies and uphold students’ right to protest.
Perhaps the most far-reaching of these administration-student agreements to date is at The Evergreen State College in Olympia. Students launched their Palestine solidarity encampment — the first one in Washington state — on April 23Liz Arias, a senior at Evergreen, said students and allied faculty negotiated with administration to grant exemptions from the college’s ban on encampment protests. Arias was part of the bargaining team made up of student protesters and allied faculty. After a six-hour negotiation session on April 30, students and administration signed a nonbinding memorandum of understanding (MOU) agreeing to commit Evergreen to a pathway toward divestment from Israel.
Specifically, administration agreed to the following: Form a committee to oversee the creation of a new responsible investments policy for the college’s $23 million endowment, refuse academic grants from institutions that discriminate against Palestinians, prohibit Evergreen from granting class credits to study abroad programs in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian territories, and recommit Evergreen to civilian oversight over its campus police force.
Arias said that both symbolically and materially, the MOU was a major step foward for the Palestine solidarity student movement.
“I would say it is a historic document,” Arias said. “This one is explicitly stating that admin will be instituting all of these programs [and] hiring folks to make sure that these student needs are being met. But they will be led by students and faculty, not the administration.”
With the end of spring quarter in about a month, Isaac said UF is exploring various ways to advance progress toward divestment of UW’s $4.9 billion consolidated endowment fund from Israel, including passing a student senate resolution and establishing a line of communication with administration.
“It’s important that we show broad popularity through our actions while also working through these routes that are going to allow us to actually facilitate direct divestment while we continue to reclaim our education outside,” Isaac said.
Guy Oron is the staff reporter for Real Change. He handles coverage of our weekly news stories. Find them on Twitter, @GuyOron.
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